Csíkménaság: Hoopoe Jesus (Small Town Legends A to Z)

This year my A to Z theme is Small Town Legends. I am exploring folklore from villages and small towns in and around Hungary, bringing you the most entertaining bits. You can plan your next visit around them!

Image from here

Csíkménaság is a village of about 600 people in Transylvania. Before WWI, this area was a part of Hungary, and the people living in the village are Hungarian-speaking székely people. The story itself, however, was collected in the neighboring Csíkszereda, as a joking anecdote.

Here it is:

A hoopoe moved into a hollow tree in the forest by the village. The people had never seen a bird like this before, and, not knowing what it was, named it Colorful Jesus. One night, a bunch of young men decided to try and catch Colorful Jesus. They went to the tree, but forgot to bring a ladder, so instead they stood on each other's shoulders. The one at the top reached into the hollow and caught the hoopoe. Cheerfully, he yelled:

"I have it! I caught Colorful Jesus!"

To which the guy at the bottom responded:

"Let me see!" - and jumped out of his place.

Predictably, the tower collapsed. Only the top guy remained up in the tree, with his arm stuck in the hollow. To help him out of his predicament, the others began to throw their axes at him, hoping to cut off his arm.

(Collected from Kelemen István in 1955. Source here)

(Note: this tale exists in several variations about several different villages around Hungary and Transylvania. In some versions the young men simply topple, while in others they succeed at cutting off the arm - after which the guy noted "lucky I didn't ruin my pants")

(Bonus note: apparently the hoopoe is known as "Colorful Jesus" after another common folk legend, in which it betrayed Jesus to the soldiers pursuing him)

Bágy: Walnut Body Armor (Small Town Legends A to Z)

This year my A to Z theme is Small Town Legends. I am exploring folklore from villages and small towns in and around Hungary, bringing you the most entertaining bits. You can plan your next visit around them!

Bágy (Bădeni) is a village in Hargita county, Romania, with about 200 inhabitants. Up until the 19th century there used to be a castle on the hill by the village, but its ruins have long been mined out for building materials. Yet, the castle still exists in legends. Here is one of them:

During a Tatar invasion in the 1640s, people fled from the neighboring villages up to the Bágy castle. However, the castle was besieged, and with that many refugees provisions were beginning to run low. Bágy and its area were known for walnut trees and fruit orchards. People used to spread out their harvest to dry in the attic of their houses.

It is said that there was a teacher from Bágy up at the castle who had a lot of children. When everyone began to starve he convinced the captain to let him out at night for food. He managed to sneak down into the village and up to the attic of his own house. He tied his shirt and pants at the ankles and wrists, and filled all his clothes with walnuts; he wanted to move fast so he didn't plan on carrying a bag. Once he was all stuffed up with walnuts, he started back up to the castle... but he was caught by a Tatar patrol. They attacked him, but when they hit him, all the walnuts made an eerie rattling sound - and the man did not go down. This made the Tatars think he was some sort of a supernatural creature. They started yelling "Djinn! Djinn!" And they ran away. The teacher got back to the castle safely with all the walnuts.

Legend says the Tatars were so scared of djinn guarding the village that they gave up the siege and left.

(Story from this book)

Ács: Zombie Goose Shenanigans (Small Town Legends A to Z)

This year my A to Z theme is Small Town Legends. I am exploring folklore from villages and small towns in and around Hungary, bringing you the most entertaining bits. You can plan your next visit around them!

Let's kick this series off with a fun one!

This story was collected from Ács, which is a town of about 7,000 people in Komárom-Esztergom county, northwestern Hungary, by the River Danube. In the olden days water mills lined the river.

The story goes that one day the millers in Lovad (a field by the river) caught a goose on the Danube and decided to cook it. They cut it up and put it in a pot to make some nice savory gulyás (take note, gulyás is originally a soup, not stew). However, the more they cooked it, the tougher the meat got. After waiting several hours for the meal, one of the millers checked the pot again - and was shocked to discover it had pieces of a fur coat in it instead of meat.

Frustrated by the whole thing, the millers dumped the soup from the pot into the Danube. But as soon as they did, the meat turned back into a goose, and it swam cheerfully down the waves of the river. The millers did not try to capture it again. They merely waved and yelled:

"Go on, damn you! Trick the millers in Aranyos down the river too!"

(Collected from Péntek József, a miller from Ács, in the 1920s. Source here)

"Aranyos" in this story refers to Csallóközaranyos (Zlatná na Ostrove) on the Slovakian side of the river.

Image from here

A to Z Theme Reveal: Small Town Legends!

Hello everyone! It's that time of the year again: people doing the A to Z Blogging Challenge are revealing their themes. This is my 15th year participating! Except for my first year, I have always had a theme, and it is always folklore and mythology related.

Here are the themes from past years:

No theme (2012)
Weird Princesses (2013)
Tales with Colors (2014)
Epics A to Z (2015)
Diversity A to Z (2016)
WTF - Weird Things in Folktales (2017)
WTF Hungary - Weird Things in Hungarian Folktales (2018)
Fruit Folktales (2019)
Folktales of Endangered Species (2020)
Tarot Tales (2021)
Gemstone Folklore (2022)
Body Folktales (2023)
Romance Tropes in Folklore (2024)
Women's Epics (2025)

This year, I am bringing another folklore-themed series for A to Z. My chosen theme (after much deliberation) is:

SMALL TOWN LEGENDS FROM HUNGARY

I have combed through a whole lot of historical legends and small town traditions, and picked the most entertaining, strange, memorable ones I could find to share with you. You will learn some hard-to-pronounce Hungarian village names, explore local folklore, and have something to remember about these places should you ever visit. Here is your inspiration to venture outside of Budapest!

There will be ferocious squirrels, village lads mistaking a hoopoe for Jesus Christ, an exploding dragon, a flying monk, and other wild adventures.

See you in April!

(This is a map of small villages [under 1000 inhabitants], tiny villages [under 500], and dwarf villages [under 200] in Hungary, from here.)

Who else is participating?

Leave your links in the comments so I can visit!

Reading list for Hero Team-Up Legends

I had the honor to participate in the Taking the Tradition On series online. I chose "Bands of Heroes" as my topic, since I have been very passionate about these legend cycles for a long time. You can watch the talk on YouTube. I promised Amy and the audience that I would compile a reading list of all the epics and sources I mentioned. So, here it is!

Nart Sagas

John Colarusso - Tamirlan Salbiev (ed.): Tales ​of the Narts: Ancient Myths and Legends of the Ossetians (Princeton University Press, 2016)

John Colarusso (ed.): Nart ​Sagas from the Caucasus: Myths and Legends from the Circassians, Abazas, Abkhaz, and Ubykhs (Princeton University Press, 2016)

Dietrich Cycle

Ian Cumpstey: The Saga of Didrik of Bern (Skadi Press, 2017)

Edward R. Haymes: The Saga of Thidrek (Garland Publishing, 1988)

Wilhelm Wagner: Great Norse, Celtic and Teutonic Legends (2004) 

Katherine M. Buck: The Wayland-Dietrich Saga (1924) 

Lewis Spence: Hero Tales & Legends of the Rhine (1915) 

Donald Mackenzie: Teutonic Myth and Legend (1934) 

Wilhelm Wagner: Epics and Romances of the Middle Ages (1884) 

Henry Weber: Illustrations of Northern Antiquities (1814) 

Comtesse von Günther: Tales and Legends of the Tyrol (1874) 

F.E. Sandbach: The Heroic Saga-Cycle of Dietrich of Bern (1906)

Charlemagne Cycle

Thomas Bulfinch: Legends of Charlemagne (1866)

Luigi Pulci: Morgante: The Epic Adventures of Orlando and His Giant Friend Morgante (Indiana University Press, 1998)

Ludovico Ariosto: Orlando Furioso (Oxford, 1999)

Glyn Burgess: The Song of Roland (Penguin, 2015)

Robert Linker: The Misfortunes of Ogier the Dane (John F. Blair, 1964)

Water Margin

Shi Nai'an: The Water Margin: Outlaws of the Marsh (Tuttle, 2010)

S. L. Huang: The Water Outlaws (Tor Books, 2023)

Romance of Antar

Terrick Hamilton: Antar, a Bedouin Romance (1819)

Princess Fatima

Melanie Magidow: The Tale of Princess Fatima, Warrior Woman (Penguin, 2021)

Attila the Hun

Gárdonyi Géza: Slave of the Huns (Corvina, 2000)

Jómsviking Saga

Lee M. Hollander: The Saga of the Jómsvíkings (University of Texas Press, 1989)

Gulaim and her warrior maidens

David Andresen: Gulaim, Warrior Maiden of Sarkop (Kindle, 2012)

(Of course, there are other hero tale cycles, like King Arthur, the Argonauts, Robin Hood, or the Fianna, but those have a whole lot of sources easily available so I'm skipping them for now)

299 earworms

This is my 7th year tracking the earworms I wake up with every morning. This year, I added a new factor to the experiment: I switched to Spotify on January 1st. So I did not only track my own internal radio, but I can also now compare it with Wrapped, and see whether there is correlation between the music I listen to the most, and the music that gets stuck most often. (I know Spotify is problematic, this was an experiment).

Let's see the previous years:

2018: I woke up with an earworm 306 mornings, featuring 150 different songs (post here)

2019: 316 mornings, 137 songs (post here)

2020: 346 mornings, 149 songs (post here)

2021: 312 mornings, 124 songs (post here)

2022: 313 mornings, 129 songs (post here)

2023: 290 mornings, 140 songs (post here)

2024: 338 mornings, 145 songs (post here)

This year I woke up on 299 mornings with music stuck in my ear. Honestly, it was probably more than that, but in many occasions the morning chaos wiped my memory before I got to record them (yay, life with a small child). There were 148 different songs represented in the sample.

Let's see the Earworm Top List first:

Unsweetened Lemonade (11 mornings)

According to Spotify, I listened to this song 30 times this year. With that, it was among the 10 most listened to songs on my Wrapped. So, there seems to be correlation.

The Cult of Dionysus (8 mornings)

Definitely correlation: this was my top most listened to song on Spotify this year (61 listens). This is my jam. It is interesting, though, that it didn't stick as often as I thought it would.

Pink Pony Club (8 mornings)

28 listens on Spotify, so it technically wasn't in the top 10. But it did stick - both the original version and the metal cover.

Popular (7 mornings)

It was way down on the list with 19 listens, but I do adore this song, I think Ariana Grande does amazing with it.

Hear My Hope (7 mornings)

To be fair, this would probably go a lot higher on the list, except I just watched Hazbin Hotel Season 2 at the end of November, so statistically, it didn't have a chance. It still made the top list in 1 month. Also, I freaking LOVE this song.

On total, Hazbin Hotel Season 2 accounted for 21 mornings in one month. Quite impressive.

I also had You're Welcome and How far I'll go from Moana on 7 mornings each, and Shiny on 5, but at this point I have just resolved to have them stuck in my head for the rest of my life. Same with We don't talk about Bruno (6 mornings).

And yes, I watched and listened to Kpop Demon Hunters, but I didn't love it. The only song that made it high up on the list was Takedown (5 mornings).

And now, for the Spotify Top Songs:

1. Cult of Dionysus by The Orion Experience

2. Wellerman by Santiano

3. W.I.T.C.H. by Devon Cole

4. Brighter Days Come by Patty Gurdy

5. Sucker from the Arcane soundtrack

6. Spin the Wheel from the Arcane soundtrack

7. Future Heroine by Ecca Vandal

Most of these didn't even make it to the earworm list, or only showed up once. So, the correlation is not always there, it turns out.

And now, for the 1-morning-only WTF contender of the year:

Happy New Year, everyone! Happy listening! :)

Women's Epics all the way: A to Z Reflections

I can't believe April is already over... 

As usual, it has been a very busy month. I would not have gotten through it had I not scheduled my posts in advance. And I am so glad I did. Women's Epics A to Z has been a whole year in the making, and it was such a wonderful adventure to explore these stories. I am happy that I finally got to share them!

26 epics with women as protagonists. Heroes. Healers. Explorers. Fighters. Lovers. Complex characters with complex lives and amazing adventures.

 You can find all the entries on this page

I know the posts were long. Much longer than the should be for a blogging challenge. But I wanted my blog to be a permanent resource for people interested in these - often hard to find and hard to read - epics. So I trusted my audience. And a lot of you stopped by and commented, which made me very happy! I will definitely do the road trip this year, because I did not get to visit nearly as much as I wanted to.

I would like to highlight some blogs that participated this year and whose themes I especially enjoyed:

Black and White by Anne E. G. Nydam - Over the course of April I bought and read the book she wrote, and I absolutely adored it! It is a collection of short stories and poetry that center on hope. It was cozy, and perfect for my soul. If you want some snippets, you can read her A to Z posts!

A year with trees - A blog and a podcast about trees. Obviously, the A to Z theme was also trees, all kinds of trees I have never heard about. It was a lovely series to follow.

Nonfiction picture books by Christina Dankert - This one was an amazing A to Z full of picture book recommendations on nonfiction topics - biographies and other interesting things. My TBR grew by a mile, and as a parent, I especially appreciated it.

A logophile's ludic musings by Deborah Weber - I always like Deborah's A to Z themes; she was an amazing way with words, and associations that always teach me something new and beautiful.

Story Crossroads - A blog about storytelling, and a returning A to Z participant with another amazing folklore and mythology theme. This time, it was all stories about cheating (or trying to cheat) death. Amazing resource.

Madly-in-Verse - Nilanjana's blog is always a delight. This year, the A to Z theme was Indian textiles, embroidery and weaving. It was a fascinating dive into a vast and colorful topic I knew little about.

There were several other blogs that I came across but didn't have time to consistently follow, or visit back. But hey, that's what the Road Trip is for! See you all there!